Retailers Get Bragging Rights for Facebook Interaction

Retail industry leads others for Facebook engagement

Retailers boast the highest interaction rates among all Facebook posters, according to 2014 data from Adobe. The US industry average interaction rate, including comments, “likes,” shares and other ways of interacting with Facebook posts, was 4.3%, Adobe reported. That was 10.3% higher than the travel and hospitality industry, which came in second.

The top 20% of retail companies posting to social media, in terms of interaction rate, averaged a 5.4% rate, according to Adobe. Again, travel and hospitality came in second, with the retail industry 8% ahead.

In an earlier release of data, focusing only on Q4 2014, Adobe also reported retail had the highest Facebook brand post engagement rate of any industry worldwide, at 4.2%. That was up from 3.7% in Q4 2013, when retail was also ahead of all other industries.

Data from Salesforce Marketing Cloud about Facebook ads—rather than brand posts—found that US retail ads had a 0.48% clickthrough rate in Q3 2014. That was lower than the click rate for ads in many other industries, including entertainment (2.84%). However, Salesforce also broke out certain categories like clothing and fashion (1.60%) that were not included in Adobe’s reporting.

Kinetic Social reported on Q4 2014 Facebook ad click rates in the US and also found retailers in the middle of the pack by this metric, behind travel and consumer packaged goods, which each had click rates at least double retail’s.

Facebook users are clearly interested in what retailers are selling—so to speak—but the data suggests brand posts are where merchants can really shine compared with those in other industries.